Dem Bones

 

Of late, suffering from the anguish of various aches and pains, I've been reminded of the lyrics from Dem Bones. With a pain from the hip to the knee, I seem to have had more than an implicit understanding that the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone and the thigh bone to the hip bone.

Of course, in my case the cause has been primarily muscular but it still hasn't prevented those lyrics going round and round in my head. 

My knees suffer from degeneration and arthritis mainly as a consequence, I suppose, of  numerous meniscus tears. There's a long history there with incidents going back as far as my twenties with disco-dancing, skiing and even wind-surfing. As somebody recently said to me, "Well at least you had lots of fun damaging them!" Frankly, I'm not sure that was necessarily case; certainly not the time my knee gave way jumping down from the airport shuttle bus on the way to the Alps and I arrived in the resort already hopping on one leg and never making it onto the slopes.

Despite hours spent strengthening the muscles around my knees, the right one in particular frequently feels unstable and is prone to locking. The last time it gave way was in fact my last of many visits to A&E in 2022, so having succeeded in avoiding the need for emergency medical treatment this year, I hope I am not tempting fate by mentioning it. On that occasion there appeared to be an ongoing spasm in the piriformis muscle that managed to irritate the sciatic nerve. Fortunately everything calmed down and ordinary service resumed despite ongoing twinges.

The annoying thing about joints and muscles though is that one little niggle can give rise to another somewhere else and before you know it, your hand goes to the lower back as you blame age and a long spell of digging in the garden. At that point some would take to the couch and put their feet up, others would look to stretch it off. As you've probably guessed I fall into the latter category.

Now I don't know whether the initial cause emanated from the knee or the piriformis playing up but next thing the hip flexor in between the two of them tightened and, as a consequence, the right leg argued vehemently with me every time I told it to move in a direction it would prefer not to. So copious weeks of stretching later, with intermittent relief from massage, infra red saunas and anti-inflammatories, I still can't exercise fully and without pain. I mean just how long is it expected to take to stretch out a taut muscle? Or is this simply a symptom of old age and a precursor to carpet slippers and a zimmer frame shuffle?

Luckily this morning I did a small group class with an instructor who took an interest in my predicament and is sure that the problem is no longer a tight muscle but rather a weak one in the thigh. Seriously I think I'm going to have to rewrite that song: the flexor's connected to the adductors, the adductors are connected to the ...

So it goes on. I mean the other night I was even suffering from a twinge in the little toe and we all know that the toe bone's connected to the foot etc.. It's easy for one little twist to cause a minor injury with knock on effects elsewhere. They escalate quickly and then it takes weeks if not months to recover. 

The instructor's recommendation for remediation? Four to six weeks of kettlebell leg raises! Check back in a month's time to see if  Mrs Thunder Thighs can still get into her jeans.